Welcome to Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Europe!
HSTAM / GWSS 343
Course Description
The Middle Ages played a critical role in the construction of modern Western gender and sexual identities, as well as our conception of love and romance. This course explores medieval European conceptions of gender, sex, and sexuality through the close reading of primary sources, including Christian religious texts, legal texts, medical treatises, histories, and a variety of literary genres. Topics will include normative Christian views of gender and sexuality, as well as forms of gender expression and sexuality that the Church condemned and attempted to police, legislative efforts to enforce gender and sexual norms, medieval understandings of non-binary and intersex bodies, and ideas about love and marriage.
This class is intended as a complement to HSTAM:340 Medieval Women, but will cover different material using different sources.
W Credit:
All students enrolled in this course will receive a W credit. You do not have to submit additional work to receive it.
Learning Objectives
This course is intended to help students refine their critical analysis and argumentative writing skills. In addition to learning about gender and sexuality in medieval Europe, students will learn to:
- contextualize, analyze, and evaluate primary sources
- use primary sources to make informed and persuasive written arguments about the past
- critically evaluate scholarly arguments in secondary sources
- apply critical theory to the historical development of gender and sexuality
- reflect critically on the differences and similarities between the institutions and people that we are studying and those of the modern western world
- appreciate that historical inquiry is influenced by the cultural and historical context of the historians conducting it
Instructor Contact Info:
Professor Urbanski (urbanski@uw.edu)
Office: 106 Smith (in the east stairwell between the 1st and 2nd floors)
Office Hours:
TA:
Office:
Office Hours:
General Rules for Contacting Instructors:
- Please check the syllabus and/or assignment handout to see if they contain the information you need before emailing instructors with questions.
- You can email us to make appointments or for quick questions, but you should come to see us during office hours or after lecture for anything that requires more than a one or two sentence response.
- Office hours are periods that we set aside specifically to meet with our students. You should come to office hours if you need help with an assignment, have questions that require a detailed response, or just want to chat about the course, medieval stuff, monsters, or cats. You can even come to office hours with a friend from class if you like.
- We check our email regularly during normal business hours (M-F between 8 am and 5 pm).
- We will reply to emails within a reasonable time-frame (within 24 hours during the week and by the afternoon of the next business day for emails received over the weekend or on holidays).
Assignments and Grading:
15% - Weekly writing assignments
20% - Midterm Exam
20% - 1200-1500 word (4-5 pages) paper reviewing a secondary study
25% - 1800- 2100 word (6-7 pages) paper on a topic of your choice
20% - Final Exam
You must turn in both papers and take both exams in order to pass the course.
Grades will be assigned as percentages on individual assignments and exams and converted to the 4.0 scale for the final course grade.
4.0 95-100%
3.5 90%
2.5 80%
1.5 70%
0.7 62% (lowest passing grade)
Late Assignments and Extensions
All assignments are due by the stated date and time. However, I do understand that life sometimes interferes with our plans. I have a “no questions asked" policy for extensions. If you are asking for an extension, I will presume you have good reasons and will grant the extension as long as it is:
- submitted to me by email (urbanski@uw.edu) before the due date/time, and
- you tell me in your email when you will turn in the work (it should be within two days at most unless there are extenuating circumstances)
If you submit frequent requests for extensions, I will reach out to see what is going on and reserve the right to grant them or not.
Late Penalties: any assignments that are submitted late (i.e., after the original due date/time if you have not received an extension, or after your extension expires if you have received one) will be docked 10% per day (including weekends and holidays).
Required Books:
NOTE: Most of the readings for this course are PDFs embedded in the syllabus below.
Resources:
Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Correspondence (with English translations)
https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/women
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
http://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/Default.aspx
Monastic Matrix: A scholarly resource for the study of women’s religious communities from 400 to 1600 CE
Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/labyrinth
Lectures:
Lectures are extremely important in this class. While our textbook will give you a broad overview of European history during the Middle Ages, my lectures will focus on placing medieval ideas about gender and sexuality within this historical framework. If you miss lecture, you will lack the historical context necessary to understand and interpret our primary sources. Exams will focus on material presented in lecture, and papers will require you to integrate material from lecture to analyze our primary sources.
Lectures will be recorded using Panopto so you can review them and catch up on any you miss. I will post my Powerpoints after lecture (they will be under Files in the Powerpoints folder).
Reading and Discussion:
We will be discussing our primary sources during the second half of class on Wednesdays. You should complete the reading for the week before then and come to class prepared to contribute to discussion.
Weekly Short Writing Assignments (Reading Responses):
We will also have weekly short writing assignments due before class on Wednesdays in which I will pose a general question about the week’s reading, and you will provide a 250-300 word response (these should take you about 30 minutes to complete and links to the assignments are embedded in the syllabus below). The writing assignments are meant to ensure that you have done the reading for the week, given it some thought, and are prepared for discussion. They also give you a low stakes opportunity to write about our primary sources and receive feedback, and will help prepare you for the kinds of writing we will do on the papers and exams.
The weekly short writing assignments comprise 15% of your grade for the course. Each assignment will be graded on a 100% scale; zeros will be given in cases where no writing assignment or an assignment that demonstrates no familiarity with the reading is submitted.
Everyone will be allowed to miss one weekly writing assignment without penalty.
Participation in Discussion:
While it will be impossible for everyone to participate in discussion every week in a class this large, you should make a point of contributing to discussion at least a few times during the quarter. Even if you do not regularly contribute to discussion, your attentive presence during discussion will help to clarify the material and prepare you for papers and exams.
Papers:
One of the major goals of this course is to help you improve your ability to read and analyze historical sources and to write persuasive historical essays. It is a fundamental premise of this class that writing is a means of learning. Reading and talking about documents from the past are useful exercises; however, writing about those texts requires you to engage with them in an entirely different manner. Learning to analyze and review the writing of others is also an excellent way to improve your own writing. There are two required papers for this course. The first paper asks you to read, analyze, and review a secondary work in the field. The second and longer paper asks you to tackle a question that interests you using a primary source we have read in class. Instructions for the papers will be posted on the course website and discussed in class.
Exams:
The midterm and final exam will each be available through Canvas for two days. You can decide when and where to take them within this open period. Both exams will include definitions and short answer questions drawn from lecture, as well as a primary source analyses section. I will issue study guides for the exams a week in advance of each exam.
Academic Standards and Conduct:
Honesty, ethical conduct, and academic integrity are expected in this course. Academic integrity includes a commitment to not engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation, or deception. Acts of dishonesty include cheating or copying, plagiarizing, submitting another person's work as one’s own, using Internet sources without citation, having another student take your exam or working together with other students on your exam, tampering with the work of another student, facilitating other students’ acts of academic dishonesty, etc.
Unless I specify otherwise, all assignments and exams are to be completed by the student alone, without inappropriate assistance of any kind (this includes using any form of AI assistance, such as ChatGPT).
Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Two of the main goals of this course are to hone your critical thinking skills and your argumentative writing skills. These skills are incredibly important for getting through life. In fact, they're far more important than your ability to recall things like what year the Norman Conquest happened. Relying on AI to produce assignments for you not only deprives you of valuable opportunities to practice these skills, the technology tends to turn out papers that are lacking in specific detail and slightly off-topic. In other words, using AI deprives you of the chance to think for yourself, and it doesn't even do a good job. It is also important to remember that text generators like ChatGPT are sometimes wrong, and that they are not familiar with my lectures. If an AI tool gives you incorrect information and you use it on an assignment, you will be held accountable for it.
You should never use AI as a substitute for your own thought or your own writing, but there are two circumstances in which you are allowed to use AI in this class (your other professors will likely have very different policies, so do not assume that my policies will apply in your other classes).
The use of AI is allowed in this class under the following circumstances only (any other use is prohibited):
1. You may use AI to provide you with explanations of concepts or to organize your notes. I would much prefer that you ask me for clarification if you are having trouble with any of the material in this course, and I am happy to answer questions after class or during my office hours, but I recognize that some of you will want to use AI for this. However, if the AI gives you incorrect information and you use that information on an assignment or exam, you will be held accountable for it.
2. You are allowed to use tools like Grammarly or Quillbot to proofread or edit writing that you have produced yourself. Just be aware that using these tools to edit your work comes with the risk that it may change your original writing so much that it no longer reflects your original thought, so make sure you are using it for simple grammar and spelling checks, not to substantially rewrite your work.
The unauthorized use of artificial intelligence (AI) can be a form of academic misconduct at UW. Tools that use AI and large language models to generate text or images, such as ChatGPT, GPT4, Bing Chat, and "Write with AI" in Google Docs (the "help me write" feature now in beta testing in Workspace Labs), are usually prohibited by instructors in Department of History courses. Unless your instructor has expressly permitted the use of such tools, check with your instructor before using them. The unauthorized use of such tools may constitute academic misconduct and could result in serious disciplinary action.
PENALTIES FOR SUSPECTED PLAGIARISM OR UNAUTHORIZED USE OF AI
I know that most of you are honest, hard-working, and would not dream of cheating. I see you and I appreciate you. You are the reason I love this job. However, there are always a couple of students who try to see what they can get away with. This policy is for them.
- All assignments containing suspected plagiarism or AI use will be sent to the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct for investigation and the enforcement of appropriate sanctions. If the Office of Student Conduct determines that plagiarism or AI use took place, the student will receive a 0 on that assignment.
- Any student found to have committed a second instance of plagiarism or AI use by the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct will fail the course.
Technology Support
If you experience issues with Canvas, here is a basic troubleshooting guide. You can also contact help@uw.edu
Accommodations:
Please let me know as early as possible if you require religious accommodations or DRS accommodations, or if there is anything I can do to support your learning style.
Information on UW policies regarding Religious Accommodations, Student Conduct, Disability Resources, Academic Integrity, and Campus Safety can be found at https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/syllabi-guidelines
THE SYLLABUS IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
The syllabus is subject to change at the instructor’s discretion.
WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTION
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK TWO:
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK THREE:
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK FOUR:
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK FIVE:
*MIDTERM EXAM OPEN MONDAY () AT 8 AM TO TUESDAY () AT 11:59 PM
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK SIX:
*FIRST PAPER DUE MONDAY, , BY 11:59 PM
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK SEVEN:
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK EIGHT:
*IF YOU ARE CREATING YOUR OWN PAPER TOPIC FOR THE SECOND PAPER, YOU MUST SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSED TOPIC TO ME (URBANSKI@UW.EDU) FOR APPROVAL NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, , BY 11:59 PM
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK NINE:
*SECOND PAPER DUE MONDAY, , BY 11:59 PM
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
WEEK TEN:
Lectures:
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
FINAL EXAM OPEN FROM MONDAY () AT 8 AM TO TUESDAY () AT 11:59 PM